Former Pearl Jam video team premieres ‘Alive & Well’ at SIFF

The former Pearl Jam music video directorial team is premiering a documentary, Alive & Well, next week at the Seattle International Film Festival.

Josh Taft and Cindy Gantz, who produced videos for “Even Flow” and “Alive,” spent years creating the documentary about seven people battling Huntington’s Disease, a neurodegenerative brain disorder that some describe as a combination of ALS, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

“Alive & Well” tries to “honor the people who trusted us with their stories, to have this film seen by as many people as possible and to raise awareness of Huntington’s Disease,” Taft said in a statement.

The documentary is scheduled for 7 p.m. May 22 and 4 p.m. May 23, both at the SIFF Cinema Uptown. Distribution plans haven’t been set, so the Seattle screenings are expected to draw big crowds.

A production of Seattle-based I-90 Films, Alive & Well features an original score composed by Saunder Jurriaans and Danny Bensi, known as Stenfert Charles. Additional music for the documentary was provided by Radiohead, Pearl Jam, the Fleet Foxes and Sigur Rós.

Gantz and Taft teamed with photography director Tadd Sackville-West, who worked on the documentary about Marco Collins, the former End DJ who was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

The disease affects at least 30,000 people in the United States alone, and because each child of an affected parent has a 50 percent chance of inheriting the genetic mutation that causes HD, at least 200,000 others are at risk.

“If people knew the stories that are in these families with HD, they would fill books and books of adventures and sources of inspiration for the rest of the world,” Dr. Michael Hayden, Killam Professor of Medical Genetics at the University of British Columbia, said in a statement.